


Cradle of Doom

by Asrael_Valtiri



Category: Berserk (Anime & Manga), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cannibalism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gore, Hux as a demon god, M/M, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rape (between Hux and Ren), Sex, Still angry about that movie, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23577925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asrael_Valtiri/pseuds/Asrael_Valtiri
Summary: “In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control; even over his own will.”
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 22
Kudos: 43





	1. Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an unholy mashup of Star Wars and Berserk. I can't imagine who this horrific combination would appeal to, outside of myself and my wife. This tale was spawned from a discussion we had about how pretty Hux would look as Femto. I will be quoting and paraphrasing the Berserk manga, particularly volumes 12 and 13, liberally. And taking liberty with the TRoS timeline. If you know anything about Berserk, you know this has all the trigger warnings.

Armitage Hux was not certain how much longer he could abide his current circumstances. Nothing went right for him, hadn’t since the destruction of Starkiller.

If he had to deal with Pryde belittling his accomplishment again, he would fly across the council table and stab him with his monomolecular blade before Ren could stop him.

If Ren lifted a finger again the way he’d done earlier, he’d bite it off. 

They’d ruined the First Order, and handed it over to strange forces. They’d destroyed everything he'd tried to accomplish with it.

Instead of bringing equality and prosperity to all sectors of the galaxy, they'd beaten planets down and made it impossible for the Order to actually do anything useful for the Outer Rim. All the plans he’d made, all the promises to encourage his people, destroyed by Ren and an old man cut from the same stupid cloth as Brendol. Two men obsessed only with power.

What was the point of the First Order if not to bring order to the galaxy? It was in the void-damned name!

But then again, the First Order no longer existed.

He’d always thought the Order’s name was a finality. The Order would arise and save the entirety of the galaxy; that its name signified the obvious: that the galaxy would now experience the first time in its history of being mended. Complete. Finally perfected.

No. The First order was far more pedestrian in meaning. It was literally the first, and now Hux saw it subsumed into the Final Order.

And Ren had emasculated Hux.

Nothing Hux did convinced Ren to give him his power back. No amount of beseeching; no attempts at manipulation or even honest advice, which Ren chose to ignore. Not even fucking. He’d tried. And for a moment, a brief period after Crait, he’d thought they could move past Ren’s abuses and work together.

But no. After Batuu, Ren had demoted and denigrated him. Now if something went wrong, he blamed Hux, even though Hux had precious little input to give the Supreme Council.

He was just there to be the whipping boy for Ren and a bunch of old farts.

If he were a different sort of man, he’d kill himself. But he was who he was and was used to living just to spite people.

But today had been especially bad. Ren’s mask returned. Pryde belittled him. Everything that could go wrong did. Ren had held him back after the meeting, and--it hadn’t gone well. He loosened his collar from his bruised neck.

Not well at all. Ren didn’t appreciate Hux lying about how well he liked his mask.

Well, Hux thought bitterly, I don’t like to be mocked and abused by people with inferior minds and goals.

Starkiller had worked. Foolish Pryde, stupid Ren. No one else in Imperial history had ever taken out the seat of the ruinous government based on false freedom and disorder. Only Hux had. He’d done his job. It wasn’t his fault Phasma dropped the shields. Ren had told him, and he’d known it was true. It wasn’t his fault Ren was endlessly distracted by his wretched family and the scavenger. It wasn’t his fault that the bloody Force seemed to favor the Resistance.

If Ren thought he was so strong in the Force and doing what it showed him, why didn’t Ren have such luck? His was as abysmal as Hux’s always had been.

It was his fault he’d loved Ren.

He knew that was probably the most idiotic thing he’d ever done.

Even as he’d told the traitor--Finn, he told himself, fuck you, Ren--that he just needed Ren to lose, he wasn’t certain what that meant.

Did he honestly think that if Ren lost, they could be together? That Ren would crawl into his arms, begging forgiveness?

Hux was furious at himself for the knowledge that he would forgive Ren.

Now, hobbling to the bridge, he knew that he’d completely given up on himself. He’d had to improvise to rescue the traitor--Finn, Force-dammit--and Poe and the Wookiee. And this frankly wasn’t his best work.

So be it.

Not as if Ren would care.

Hux swallowed thickly at the knowledge. If Ren didn’t care about him anymore--and he surely did not--then no one cared about Armitage Hux.

Hux brushed away a tear. He refused to waste anymore tears on Ren.

He knew Ren was chasing after the scavenger on this very ship, right now. And he somehow knew that she would flee with her friends.

You’ll know how it feels again, Hux thought bitterly, to be forsaken by someone you want. But, he considered, at least Ren and I had a relationship once. It was even good, for a little while.

When he entered the door to the bridge and gave Pryde what he knew was the worst alibi ever concocted in Imperial history, he wasn’t terribly shocked when Pryde shot him in the chest.

He had already given up.

His life meant nothing.

His love meant nothing, but it had already been given ages ago.

As he skidded to a painful stop on the floor of the bridge, he gave up completely, welcoming death, if it could take the pain of Ren from him.

One final tear fell from his eye. His heartbeat slowed, his vision darkened, his chest burned.

He expected death to overtake him, but it didn’t.

“I’ve taken care of the spy,” he heard Pryde say.

He shouldn’t hear anything.

He clutched his chest. There was a hole. In his body. Nestled inside, pulled from his broken chain, his dog tags melted into the flesh around it, sat the strange little red egg charm his mother had given him when he was a very small child. A behelit is what she had called it, though he didn't know why and never understood what that name meant. It was a small oval object resembling an egg with a set of human facial features scattered randomly across its surface, giving it a rather disconcerting appearance. He had worn it, all these years. It lay close to his heart, soaking in the plasma of his singed muscle tissue. He stared at it in confusion.

It moved. Slowly.

Its strange, misshapen face had frightened him, but she’d ordered him to keep it on him always.

And he had.

Now its distorted face began to pull itself torturously right. Its full red lips twisted to the front. It’s anguished eyes met above its nose. For a moment, he deliriously thought it looked a bit like Ren.

“Kriff--”

Hux sat up and regarded Pryde’s ashen face.

“You should be dead--”

Hux took the behelit from his chest cavity and held it up. He watched it complete itself.

And then it opened its mouth and began to scream in agony. Blood flowed from its eyes as it wailed. 

Pryde fell to his knees, covered his ears with his hands.

Shocked, Hux watched as the Steadfast changed. In a heartbeat, with a silent explosion from around his own body, blood red overtook the floor, the walls, the ceiling of the Steadfast. The ship ceased to exist and became instead a hilly wasteland of muscle and arterial tissue. Faces appeared and cried out. Gouts of what looked like blood flowed between each huge, lumpen face. A darkened sky appeared overhead, and a bloodied sun loomed over everything.

“What in all hells--” an officer cried.

Hux got to his knees.

“What are those?” another cried.

Somehow, the vast hills that were faces extended for leagues in every direction. And approaching from too near a distance were a legion of malformed creatures. Humanoid, but not like any creature Hux had ever seen. He looked to the crimson egg as it seemed to hum in his palm, its cry calling the creatures.

He tried to close it in his fingers, to quiet it, but to no avail. It kept up the howling until the ship was completely gone, enclosed in the spectral landscape, and the creatures drew nearer to him.

They stood around Hux, Pryde, the other officers and troopers, smiling their macabre, toothsome smiles and ogling with their wide, round eyes.

And suddenly, all eyes turned.

“What the fuck is happening?”

Ren. 

All the creatures turned to Ren. One seemed to run its distended tongue over its lips at the sight of him. As if it wished to consume his flesh. Hux scowled almost jealously at it.

Then they all turned to Hux, cocked their heads in unison.

“Hux?”

He turned to Ren, his eyes filled with tears, his chest gaping.

“What happened--” Ren began. He almost looked upset.

Was he sorry that Hux sat here with a hole in his chest that should by all rights have killed him? Was he distressed his flagship was now a gruesome landscape of bodiless faces wreaking of blood and viscera?

Ren reached out to him.

Stars help him, he reached back.

And then the world shook.


	2. The Invocation

Ren fell to his knees beside Hux. He took Hux by the shoulders and stared at his face, the wound and its edges. The stench of his own burned flesh stung Hux’s nose. He reached in to touch the jagged edges, placed a finger where his heart used to be.

How was he still alive, if his heart no longer existed to pump his blood thrumming through his body?

“Hux?” Ren murmured as the world shook again.

Hux looked at Ren. He clearly saw confusion in his face, but he wasn’t convinced he saw affection.

He felt himself sneer, pull away, but that just made him fall back on his elbows.

The world quaked beneath them, around them, once more, resounded with the fear and confusion of all the people trapped with them; for trapped is what they all were. In what might very well be actual Hell.

In the distance, the land coalesced into a form. Emerging from the hills, trembling Hux’s whole world, was a nude woman. She rose, immense and exquisite, from the faces, a veritable goddess. She was far closer than she should have been. As she rose above them all, her feet so far above them she hung like a star, she stared at Hux directly and moaned in ecstasy. She writhed and began to touch herself as black wings furled around her and formed hardened, bat like membranes embracing her voluptuous form. A black, armored corset hugged her waist, and a black choker closed around her neck like the carapaces of huge black beetles.

She bestowed a beautiful, feral smile upon Hux.

He was horrified. He was enraptured. Though he wanted no woman, never had, he felt seduced by her. Her smile grew, as if she could sense his desire.

Before he could reach out for her, beg her to take him from this, heal him, a cyclone appeared close above their heads. Pryde squawked inelegantly.

The cyclone swirled into a bullet-shaped form that fell upon them like a bomb. Before it hit them, it flew giggling into the air and shaped itself into a small, round thing. A male, hands clasped together, tentacled; its body was covered in a ribbed, hard black substance like the beautiful woman’s corset. Embedded in his flesh above his maniacally toothy grin he wore black opaque optic lenses stapled to his face, like diabolical goggles. His cowl came to a sharpened point behind his rounded, bald head.

An instant later, another creature joined the first two. He raised himself, erected from the tortured, howling faces of the landscape--a fat, lumpen thing with protruding veins around his eyes and under his jowls. His eyes squeezed themselves shut, and his mouth looked like a fish’s gaping out of water. He too was adorned in a ribbed black carapace that, at the front, formed a row of grotesque tubing or pipe, like an infernal fountain. Beetled jewels encircled his neck and jutted from his sloped shoulders.

“Oh, kriff!” someone yelped. Someone else began to weep.

Ren clutched at Hux in mortification. Ren’s nose began to bleed, but he was in too much shock to attend to it. Gingerly, Hux reached over to wipe the blood from his upper lip.

Hux longed to taste it, but he couldn’t say why. He obeyed the instinct.

The metallic salt tang hit his tongue and drove waves of pleasure through his body.

The three creatures observed gleefully. The goddess--for what else could she be?--touched herself pleasurably, uttering a moan that reverberated like thunder through Hux’s carved torso.

Her moaning segued into an actual low roll of thunder, and all eyes--even the creatures’--turned to the sky. To the bloodied viscera of a sun.

Something eclipsed it, overlaying it in a tenebrous black that seemed to flow thickly like blood into the sky, soaking it until it all slid into a long, thin form from eldritch nightmares, the likes of which Hux could never have fathomed.

This new being was the tallest, high as the sky, vast as a mountain. Its shadow loomed like a horrible specter above everyone. Ren lowered his head but watched through his lashes. Hux knelt rigidly, gazing up at the horror.

It was like some dark god no one could have imagined. No one in the Order.

Its face was terrible, what remained of it. Atop its head sat a massive, exposed brain, and who knew the depths of knowledge it held. Next, what should have been its eyes--sightless, sewn together with what would be the thickest ropes to a mortal man. Its nose was non-existent; only the hollow cavern of the sinus cavity, empty of the cartilage that would fill and shape a nose, dwelt in the middle of its awful visage. Its face was a skeleton with the skin around the mouth pulled back by cords that disappeared mysteriously behind its head, exposing large teeth and gums. It was clothed in a membranous black cloak to match the other three, with a massive collar stretching out behind its head.

Whatever it was, it was surely the leader.

Ren trembled beside him.

“This is surely the true darkness. Not even Snoke saw this, not even Palpatine,” he uttered. His voice trembled. His fear surprised Hux, especially when Hux felt only wonder.

Hux still clutched the egg in his hand.

Ren huddled into himself on the ground. And Hux wished to embrace him, comfort him.

Claim him.

His fingers rested themselves in Ren’s hair. It grounded him, he thought. Now he would look and be afraid.

He was not.

He was enraptured.

The four beings gazed back at him--at Hux, not Ren, not the man who wielded the dark side of the Force--but at Hux! They waited expectantly.

At last, the corpse-like leader spoke, and Hux could feel his voice in the ground beneath him, all around, in his very bones, as if it spoke into his very being.

“At this great time of blessing, I bid thee welcome to this distant setting, this abstract time. Ye lambs of the unholy darkness, enjoy this sacred nocturnal feast to the fullest!” it proclaimed.

It raised an ebony skeletal finger and pointed, not at Ren, but at Hux.

“Thou, honorable child consecrated by the causal laws of the Force. Thou art the chosen one.”

The squat tentacled beast laughed and sang in his high, playful voice, “We are kinsmen, O blessed king of longing!”

Ren stood, trembling before them.

“No,” said the beautiful woman, “not you, boy.” She laughed. “Such a lovely creature. Would that I could enjoy you myself, dear sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice--?” Ren whispered.

“Oh, yes,” she replied in her sultry voice, a low purr that shook Hux to his bones. “Such a beautiful tragedy, brothers. This exquisite sacrifice does not know that our new brother has loved him so long, so well, in spite of all the sacrifice has done to him!”

She laughed, and the tentacled creature and the lumpen creature followed in chorus. The skeleton remained still, waiting for his next proclamation.

The woman continued, “Such a tortured adoration, brothers,” she groaned breathily, laying a hand to her breast and clutching. “I am certain you will be a perfect sacrifice, lovely child, an ideal sacrifice so that our beautiful brother may become…” she paused and pressed her other hand betwixt her thighs, “a demon.” 

Hux wondered what manner of gods these beings were. If she were a deity of carnal pleasure, of passion, what were her brothers?

What was he, if he were one of them?

Hux stood beside Ren, chest wound agape.

“Oh, how lovely they look together,” the lump giggled.

Ren scowled.

Yes, Hux thought. They did look an excellent pair. If only Ren could have realized.

“If only, little brother!” the tentacled creature cackled. “It seems our beloved is dense, is a fool! His regret will taste sweet to you!”

“What are you saying?” Ren demanded. “I am the only one here who controls the Force!”

Hux stared at him. The truth that Ren apparently believed he should sacrifice Hux hurt. But it was just another pain in a long line of agonies. The tentacled creature regarded Ren with a disdainfully amused smile and began to float around Ren tauntingly.

“Stop!” Ren shouted.

“Such arrogance! Such self-loathing! Little brother, you chose so well!” he tittered.

Though Hux was horrified, something about these four called to him. Like this is where he’d always needed to be. Like this was the family he’d always been meant to have. It felt wonderful being chosen for something over Ren, especially something that, given his awful powers, Ren should have.

Tentacles floated upside-down before Hux and Ren, one finger held aloft, as he explained, “The moment the crimson behelit fell into your hands, you had the qualities to become a demon.” He tapped Hux’s cheek with his cold, clammy hand. “Or, rather, you received the behelit because you already had what it takes! And since you called us here with it, you become our kinsman, our brother in eternal darkness!”

The lump continued, “All these Apostles used behelits to ascend, to evolve into their true forms! He clapped and giggled. “And you possess the red, the Egg of the King! With it, you will be reborn as one of the Godhand!”

“You all speak too much,” Ren snarled. He raised a hand, and Hux knew what he meant to do, knew it would benefit him nothing. He grabbed Ren’s arm and tried to push it down.

“Stop, Ren--”

But Ren spun around to face him, and transferred his aggression to Hux. Hux felt his feet leave the ground, felt his throat constricting.

Even now, Ren had to show his superiority. No one had ever believed Hux’s worth, not even the man he’d loved for nearly six years. Were he less curious, he’d concede and let Ren kill him.

No, he wouldn’t. That was a lie, Armitage, he told himself.

The skeleton flicked a finger, and Ren flew several feet into a fleshy mound whose visage looked pained. The hillock began to wail, and the other faces from the ground to those crawling toward the reddened sky followed suit.

Ren sat up, covered in grue.

“You, and all of you precious lambs,” said the woman, “are sacrifices for the angelic event!”

The humanoid beings who had first appeared with the landscapes all cheered. Their raucous chorus transformed as they proclaimed joyously into feral growls and whoops. Each creature grew, became distended, bestial, as it metamorphosed into something diabolical, naked, filthy, terrible to perceive. Each being was a chimera of unholy parts, something no sentient could ever comprehend; no mortal could survive the sight of such abominations and remain sane. Tentacles and horns and spikes, faces within mouths, and so many teeth--anatomy that, taken individually, could be recognized, but in combination so horrible that officers began screaming, fainting, attempting to flee.

The lump, the tentacle, and the goddess all laughed. Only the skeleton observed the proceedings with a stoic, dutiful silence.

After a few minutes of the horror, after the people on the bridge and, it seemed now, everyone on the ship, had let out a collective cry, Pryde stepped forward.

“Surely, this is a mistake,” he said. “We too are servants of the dark side. I’m certain we can--”

“Silence!” the skeleton shouted, though his mouth hadn’t moved, not this entire time.

Pryde fell to his knees, trembling.

Hux relished the sight.

“Oh, little man,” the goddess said, “you are not servants. You are not even tools. You are mere toys. You know nothing of darkness!”

She sneered at Pryde. “You will be a pathetic sacrifice. Our brother will be glad to see you die.”

Pryde turned on his creaking old knees and glared at Hux.

“All of this has been predestined,” the skeleton proclaimed. “All of your lives have been gathered here, for the Eclipse, this sacred moment in which the Godhand will be completed. Let us perform the Invocation of Doom.”

The lump’s eyes squinted open, and they looked wrong leering from the folds of his cheeks. His tiny pupils sat in opposing directions in the sea of their jaundiced sclerae. His strange mouth opened like a fish’s dying as he cried out, “Bring the child to the altar!”

And suddenly, the ground beneath Hux’s feet began to move. He stumbled and fell to his knees as the earth began to raise into the fetid air. The four gods stood around him at a distance. Three of them gazed upon him almost adoringly, but the skeleton was indecipherable.

“Hux!” Ren cried.

Hux turned and watched Ren dashing towards him.

The lump raised a hand to stop Ren, unobserved by Hux. But when Hux reached out a hand to grasp Ren’s, the skeleton prohibited the lump from interfering.

Hux was afraid. What right did he have to be a god? How could he trust these creatures, even though in his gut, he knew they spoke the truth? He held Ren’s hand tightly as Ren scrambled to join him.

Hux trembled. And, perhaps the first time in nearly a year, Ren pulled him against his chest.

“It’s okay, I’m here,” Ren told him.

Hux comprehended none of this insanity, only that Ren was warm and held him tightly as they shivered against each other. And that he wanted, very badly, perhaps for the last time, to kiss Ren.

So he did.

He pulled Ren’s great giant head to his own and pressed his lips to Ren’s. And Ren reciprocated. Hux desperately wanted to take Ren right here, now, but the gods watched. He could hear the woman’s sultry laugh as she watched them.

And perhaps Ren would let him, if Ren thought he might benefit from allowing Hux to fuck him.

“I cannot wait, Void,” she said.

"Patience, Slan,” the skeleton replied.

“It’s too delicious,” she gasped.

Hux released Ren, but they knelt together, holding hands.

And the ground ceased its movement. Far above the altered Steadfast, the two men heard a chant rise up from the monsters below them.

“Invocation of Doom! Invocation of Doom!”

The ominous words reverberated throughout the hellscape.

Ren released Hux to move toward the edge of their cliff. Their pedestal? Their altar.

For altar it was.

Hux sat in the palm of a great hand, far over the tableau below; the fingers of the hand soared above his head even at this height. Upon each fingertip stood one of the gods, except for the index finger. The finger of a god that awaited…

Him.


	3. The Sacrifice

Hux huddled on his knees before the creatures. His chest wound felt as nothing now, just air in his lungs, if they worked. He raised a hand to his mouth and nose, but no exhalations whispered on his skin. He took off a glove and touched his wrist with his first two fingers, but no pulse throbbed against their tips. He wasn’t alive, yet he was thinking and seeing and feeling. And crying. His blood should be going stagnant in his vessels. His systems should be shutting down like a dying ship. The fact that they weren’t confused him, but somehow didn’t disturb him like it should.

The skeleton, Void, turned his attention upon Hux. Hux could only look at his awful visage in awe.

“Is one such as yourself afraid of us? Or perhaps, your future?”

Void waved an imperious hand, and the tentacled creature floated before Hux.

“Ubik, show our brother,” he said.

Ubik’s tentacles seemed barely to move as he approached Hux upside-down.

“Hey--!” Ren shouted and made to interfere. But Hux held up a hand, and, miraculously, Ren obeyed. Perhaps from the peculiarity of all of--this.

Ubik held a finger up before Hux’s face.

“Before you embrace your future, let us visit your past, to see all that brought you to this threshold,” he said affably, if a maniacally grinning demon from the abyss could sound affable. Hux supposed it could, but only still sounding like it might rip out one’s throat.

Hux slowly nodded, disliking Ubik’s attention on him.

And suddenly, he was a child, in his mother’s arms. A woman he hardly remembered now, and he felt tears upon his cheeks as she sang to him. The song became a cry as Brendol pulled him from her arms, and she begged one more embrace. As she clutched him, she slipped the behelit over his head, and it hung heavy on his tiny chest.

Then he was on a ship, afraid. He saw Rax and his feral children and Sloane. He saw Jakku and the students of the Academy. His father’s fists and the mocking faces of Brooks and Pryde. He saw the first person he killed, a bullying cadet, and all the others piling at his feet--abusers, mockers, cheats, and liars. Brendol and Brooks and older students and officers who had ever beaten him or touched him. From the beginning of his career until now, he rose and climbed a mountain of corpses, crawling into the sky, though he still felt as small as the frightened child being forced through trooper training programs by the man who informed half his genetic makeup.

And then the glow of Starkiller Base blazed before him, billions upon billions of lifeforms destroyed by his creation, his orders, his mind--and he still hadn’t grown strong enough, climbed high enough to take the galaxy in the palm of his hand. At this rate, as he dragged himself higher up the mountain of corpses, he’d never reach his goal.

“Useless boy. Stupid boy,” he heard Brendol say behind him. “All those dead, and you still can’t achieve anything.”

His eyes smarted.

“I killed you, old man. Fuck off.”

“You’re far better as a bed warmer, boy,” an older officer laughed as the Cadet Hux fled his office.

“I like you better than your father. You care about what I can do, not what’s between my legs,” said Phasma with a feral smile as she showed him her Parnassos bug.

And now he wept as he saw her form at his feet. She was burned and bloodied and broken from the Supremacy.

“I didn’t want this! She was the closest thing I had to a friend!” he cried. He crouched beside her and took her shriveled hand in his own, brought it to his cheek.

Ubik clucked his tongue in a mockery of sympathy. Floated around Hux’s hunched form and sighed. “If you wish to reach your goal, if you wish to rule an empire, you must trample those beneath you. You must chase your dream single-mindedly. Or become just another corpse for someone else to trample.”

Hux raised his face. His countenance burned with anger. “I wished to save the galaxy, not destroy it!”

“Every dream requires,” and here Ubik paused, “a sacrifice,” he finished significantly.

“Am I no better than Palpatine?” Hux cried.

Ubik shrugged, and his tentacles moved at last.

“That is entirely up to you. Finish what you started. Ascend, or do not. If you do not, you die and become just another corpse on someone else’s road. Perhaps that person will do what you could not. Or perhaps, he will ascend.”

And here, Ubik raised a hand.

Hux returned to his here and now, turned to see Ren, ashen and trembling as he gazed at Hux.

“But he will never bring order, will he?” The lump said suddenly.

Hux started.

“Conrad, your final brother,” Ubik told Hux.

Conrad spoke in his peculiar voice. “He was not chosen. You have the crimson behelit.” Conrad pointed at the egg in Hux’s hand. “Choose to become what you were meant to be. You’ve always known you were meant to rule the galaxy. This is your chance. All anyone else has ever done is to distract you, oppress you. To keep you from obtaining your destiny.”

Hux looked at Ren.

Ren, whom he, in his own twisted way, still loved.

“Your path was interrupted,” Conrad told him. “You were held back by mortals jealous of your abilities.”

“But look,” Slan said, joyfully spreading her arm over everyone below. “These little beings here, gathered for you, so filled with despair--commit your wounded self to them. Bury your past in the ruins of your dream.”

She smiled at Ren as she said these words.

Hux watched Ren’s pale throat swallow harshly. How he’d once left it so marked under that high collar, claiming Ren, until Ren forsook him. How he loved Ren. Even now, somehow more than anything else. And that love had cost him dearly, even his own life. Hux tilted his head, considering the beautiful man for whom he’d longed for ages now. For whom he’d wept.

Now Void spoke again. “If even now, you desire order for this galaxy more than anything else, then take all you have left and proclaim that you will sacrifice it all, so that you may spread your vast black wings o’er the galaxy and recreate it all in the image you desire. If it be reason that destiny transcend human intellect and make playthings of children, it is the will of the Force that a child bear his evil and confront his destiny.”

Hux knelt as if in a trance as Void spoke, but it broke as Ren took a step towards him.

“Hux,” he murmured.

A shrill wail from below reached their ears, and Ren turned away again.

“You were the only one who ever became more precious than my dream, Ren, and you destroyed me,” Hux told him quietly.

“What?” Ren asked, brows furrowed, as he faced Hux again.

Hux clutched the crimson behelit. With tears in his eyes, he said, “I love you, Ren.”

And then General Armitage Hux gazed up at Void and whispered,

“I sacrifice.”

And the fist of the Godhand enclosed him.


	4. The Feast

Void raised his membranous arms and called, “The promised time has come!”

Above his acranial brain there appeared a strange sigil, almost like an angular, open-topped figure eight, with a line bisecting the length of it. At the top of the line were three small jagged points like tongues of fire. Void’s boned fingers rose to bracket it before he spread his arms wide once more, as if throwing the sigil down upon the gathered sacrifices.

Ren had watched the fingers of the great fist close around Hux. Now he stood at the edge of the fist and watched as streaks of fire tore through the people below. As each streak slammed into a person, they cried out. One streak crashed into Ren’s left pectoral. Over his heart. And it burned into his flesh as he yelped in pain.

And then.

And then.

And then.

Hell broke fully loose upon them.

The monsters, the Apostles, Ren had heard them called, surged forward in their diabolical, bestial forms and crashed like an infernal wave belched from the lowest Sith hell into the crew of the Steadfast. Though there were enough people aboard to populate a city, there seemed to be more than enough creatures to plow through all of the humans. Honestly, Ren wasn’t certain if this world encompassed the whole of the Steadfast; but if it didn't, where was the rest of the ship?

Suddenly, he heard more screams, louder, more terrified than before. He looked below.

The Apostles had fully converged upon the bridge crew. Pryde screamed as two monsters chased and slashed at him. He drew his blaster and managed to fire off a shot, until another threw itself at him and simply bit off his arms with its lamprey mouth that jutted out of the labial folds of its neck.

“What in all Sith hells--?’ Ren yelped, stumbling back against the folded fingers of the fist.

“You think too small boy,” Conrad giggled.

“This goes deeper than something so inconsequential,” Ubik chortled.

“What is now upon you is the Brand of Sacrifice,” Void explained. “You are now demonic offerings to your last drop of blood. Your blood, your agony, becomes sustenance for this new child of darkness.”

Below, Pryde’s scream was cut off as two Apostles succeeded in catching him by his legs and ripping him in half. A geyser of blood spewed over their gluttonous, pleased, warped bodies. They crunched at his bones, sucked his marrow, slurped his fluids, his viscera as they moaned in almost carnal pleasure.

Ren drew his lightsaber and flung himself at the scabrous fingers, slashing impotently away until his lightsaber shorted. He roared, raised a clenching hand, and willed the fist to release Hux.

Hux was his. His to do with as he pleased. He wielded the Force. He was Supreme Leader. He ruled the galaxy, and he ruled Hux.

“Release him! He’s mine,” he demanded of the Godhand.

Void regarded him apathetically.

Conrad giggled morbidly.

Ubik floated around huffing his amusement.

Slan leered.

“You heard him, little beauty,” she purred. “He called out for sacrifice. Even as,” she screamed suddenly with laughter, “he told you he loved you! Even though you are cruel to him! Even now, you wish not to save him, but to take this power for yourself, which you think you deserve!”

“No one deserves it but he who has received,” Conrad snickered.

Ren snarled and tried to focus on the four demons above him, but nothing happened. They seemed to absorb his energy.

So he focused on the fist again.

“Let me in, Hux!” he cried.

And the Force bounced back and flung him over the edge of the palm, tumbling towards the carnage below.

He landed in a pool deep with blood and offal, pieces of bodies floating around him. People still ran, but they were fewer, the screams fainter.

Pryde’s face appeared before him, rising from the viscous, viscera-filled lake. Blood trickled down his cheeks, and his eyes looked strange. Ren realized why as two great orbs on stalks poked through Pryde’s eyeholes and peered at him. A long mouth of sharpened teeth grinned below Pryde’s chin, and the body to which it was attached stood high over Ren. Its gelatinous body oozed towards Ren, wanting to engulf him, but he slashed out with his lightsaber, hoping it would work.

It did, and the creature squealed as he eviscerated it. It’s guts gushed from the maw of its injury as it died, further drenching Ren.

A guttural roar startled the grue-soaked Supreme Leader. The thick fluid of the lake in which he still stood trembled around him, almost like gelatin, so filled with corpses and offal was it. He tasted the sour sting of bile in his throat. Yes, he had butchered, but never like this. Even with his own galactic body count, Hux had never left this morbid detritus behind. The beings of the Hosnian System had been disintegrated. The beings of the Steadfast had been vivisected, demolished, half-consumed. But these monsters seemed resolute in their need to leave their mark. Yes, they devoured, but they also left behind a bloodbath in which to wallow.

Now, Ren sensed the creatures behind him. He didn’t know if Apostles were Force-sensitive, or if it depended like with other sentients. But he swung his arm in a wide arc, following through with his body, and cut the legs of the creature barreling down upon him. It slid through the lake of gore with a yowl as he followed and fell upon it, dismembering it with his own feral yell.

“Oh, such ferocity!” Slan said adoringly. “Such violence. He is a truly marvelous thing, a perfect sacrifice. I cannot wait to feel his despair as he falls!”  
  


Ren’s blood-covered face turned bestial as he yelled and fought his way through the Apostles. He sought his crew, not because he cared for them, but just because he had no desire to be the lone survivor. Dismay pulled his head around, and misery clutched at his heart when he realized that he was indeed the only survivor.

All around him, the Apostles gathered. Some held legs in their paws, casually crunching away at a guard. Others grinned vile grins with the heads of troopers between their lips like fruit rinds. Others slurped at torsos, drinking the blood with distended tongues. Monsters surrounded him, and he stood nearly apoplectic in shock.

And then one took up the chant again, the others quickly following.

“Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice…”

Ren assumed a stance, preparing himself as much as he possibly could, and the Apostles roared their excitement.

“Come on then, you rabid assholes!” he spat, and he tasted blood on his lips.

The blood of his destroyed subordinates. His destroyed empire.

And the monsters charged.

  
  


**

  
  


Beyond the scope of Ren’s senses, the demonic plane upon which he stood, others sat in a familiar ship and observed the strange occurrence from the safety of space.

Poe Dameron sat wide-eyed in the pilot’s seat. Beside him, Rey leaned forward, nearly crawling against the viewport, her athletic build crammed against the transparisteel. Finn stood trembling behind them. He placed a hand upon Poe’s shoulder and clenched.

“Ouch, Finn, buddy--” And Poe turned to gasp in surprise. He rose and clutched at Finn. “What's happened? Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“N-no,” he murmured as Poe tilted his head up.

Poe touched his cheek gently.

Rey watched them quietly, her heart pounding. This, here, is what she wanted, not whatever Snoke or Ben had tried to convince her to want. She desired this goodness, this warmth. And she knew, deep down, this was the intended outcome. These two dear men beside her. She knew why Poe was angry, but she didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t need to be jealous.

But that needed to wait, because she found herself falling forward against his back. And Poe found himself sandwiched between Finn and Rey, both grimacing and shaking.

“Shit, you’re bleeding too?” he cried.

Rey brought a hand to her nose.

“It’s the Force, somehow,” she said. She and Poe gasped at Finn.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said with a shrug, “but there’s never a good time.”

Rey took a breath.

The three turned to look out the viewport of the Millennium Falcon.

Half of Kylo Ren’s flagship tilted awkwardly in the vacuum of space. It was dead, and corpses floated around it, along with the debris of the ship.

The other half, no longer visible, sat entrapped in a maelstrom, a strange cyclone the color of nebulae. Nothing came from it, and nothing entered.

From this mysterious whirlwind Rey sensed great darkness, beyond anything she’d ever felt. The cave on Ahch-To was as nothing compared to this. Snoke was laughable. The emperor merely a flatulent expulsion of evil. This here was where true darkness resided.

And it made her skin crawl. It set her teeth on edge; she clenched until her jaw pained her.

“What the hell is that?” Poe whispered, awestruck despite himself.

“Dark,” she replied.

“Are there people in there?” Finn asked.

She reached out and felt a nothingness so vast it agonized her, and she cried out. There was such a depth of nothingness, the caustic taste of the residue of despair from so many creatures, she choked. She wanted to vomit it all back into the void consuming half the Steadfast.

But there was one heartbeat amongst all that emptiness, one tiny blip of, not light--never that--but at least life. It screamed in anger and made her ears ring.

“Ben?” she said.

She could almost see him as she reached through the maelstrom, but everything was red and dark and fathomless evil. She sensed only him, and she sighed in resignation.

And suddenly, she felt seen.

Something stabbed into her mind, something vile and mocking.

A low voice echoed in her head.

“You have no place here, child. You are not a sacrifice. You are not needed. Do not make yourself a futile hero. All lies within the causality of the Force.”

And something thrust her connection away so hard, she awakened ten minutes later in Finn’s arms.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Ben is in there. He’s the only one,” she replied. She sighed.

Finn and Poe looked mortified.

“Ugh, we’ll have to go fetch him,” she said.


	5. The Advent

Inside the fist of the Godhand, Armitage Hux was changing.

At first, he couldn’t discern whether he was frozen or scorched to the bone. He felt dried and desiccated, as if his old body were perishing, shriveling away into nothingness. Perhaps the Force enveloped him, drew him into its embrace in order to disassemble his myriad parts. But he felt the physicality of this experience too much. He thirsted. He was parched. He didn't truly know where he was, how any of this horrorshow came to exist on Pryde’s ship. He felt empty, he longed, he desired. He felt as if he were being broken down and remade anew.

He had no clue what went on beyond the cradle of this infernal embrace.

Until he did.

For, quite suddenly as unbeknownst to Armitage Hux the deaths piled up to feed him, to rebuild him, he experienced a fevered flash coursing through whatever was left of him, body or soul. Whatever ineffable, implacable thing that had made him himself and was not yet so eroded he no longer knew what he’d been or what had made him thus. He trembled and curled into himself and suddenly, he could see.

He could see the blood. The viscera of so many sentient beings. He could feel their beings pulled into him, without their consent. He sensed the screams and pain and despair pulsing through his body like a heartbeat. All of their agonies gave him strength in their sustenance. His essence uncurled and reached out for those dead and dying people; he seized them all to himself and glutted on their misery. The deaths of his people drove through him, into his transforming soul, and his lack of terror or dread baffled him--his lack of anything, really. All he felt was cold satisfaction as his hunger was satiated, as his thirst quelled. Hunger, thirst beyond the physical. He’d always negated anything but the physical, the empirical, the quantifiable, but now he realized that there were other measurements of which he could never have known until now.

A passing thought: I caused their deaths. I’m responsible. He approached this thought objectively, without remorse this time. Unlike all the times before that he’d failed the Order. His people.

But this is how I achieve greatness, he thought. Order. Now I will be the one powerful enough to order the galaxy as I see fit.

This idea filled him with giddy joy, and he found himself confused by the emotion.

As he sank further into himself, he felt a presence around him. Or, perhaps, many presences. He saw without seeing a drop fall and ripple the darkness around his essence.

“What is that?” he wondered.

“Your last tear shed,” came the reply. “When suffering so profound as to make someone rip himself apart is confronted, a heart is frozen.”

Frozen. Perhaps. He felt a lack, but Pryde had shot him. He pondered this Pryde for a moment, before the name slipped from his consciousness. Pryde meant nothing now.

As he dissolved into himself, now he felt himself rebuilt. He felt the Force--or something-cocooning him. Felt each molecule cling to its mate cling to the rest of him as he was being reformed for his…

Rebirth.

“What are you?” he asked, observing the molecules, “Behelits?”

Each one had an agonized face as it sped around him, cohered to him.

“They are droplets of ideas that have spilled from this sea to eternity. A summons to you to your new world. To the Force. To all the power you’ve ever dreamed.”

“What?” Hux said, and his universe burst before him. He fell through the darkness of nothing into the bright effervescence of all things. He could see the Force. He could see the tiny molecules flowing through it that gave someone like Ren his power.

Ren.

Ren. 

Ren echoed through him like a lost cry in a vast subterranean system and pierced the single atom remaining of his heart.

Midicholorians sped around him, and a voice called softly, lulling him, pulling him through the Force.

Countless midichlorians clung to him, far too many to assign a number. He felt power surge through him as he continued into the darkest depths of the Force, where death and cruelty and greed awaited.

He sensed a power there, but even as he was, he could not see it. He imagined this must be what god felt like. He reached out to that abyss, and something cold like a tentacle reached back to embrace him. He let it.

“Child of darkness,” it called him. “Beloved creature of unquenchable desire, never sated, the one whose need for conquering has never been consummated. Welcome to our family.”

Hux felt something like a kiss through his being, and then he was released. He floated back through the Force, gathering power and self and physicality as he returned.

And still, one small word echoed inside of him. That word was not revenge. It was not power.

It was Ren.

**

  
  


And Ren himself no longer fought. He’d done all he could, but the creatures had trapped him. And their demonic gods had interfered, all but Void, who preferred to watch the proceedings from a distance with an officious, detached air. But Ren wasted time with his Force powers and lightsaber, and finally Ubik had held out a hand to freeze his body, much to the delight of Slan and Conrad.

The creatures took him in their hands, tentacles, proboscii, and stripped him. They wished to admire his lush, supple flesh before they devoured him. They wished to make this offering to their new godling one to remember. They wished to entertain and titillate their exquisite Slan, for whom all felt more than a little lust.

As Ren’s legs were parted, each held by a ribbonlike tentacle, another tentacle bound his wrists together above his head, so that his long, muscled body was stretched so taut that it arched sensually. The monsters held him aloft, their prize to be admired, before lowering his ass over a sharp, horned protuberance on another creature’s head. To breach him, to impale him, to pierce his prostate gloriously before splitting him in twain.

They began to lower him.

And the fist of the Godhand pulsed loudly.

All the creatures stopped, and Slan exclaimed gleefully, as the fist opened. And in its palm sat an egg. Rivulets of blood flowed up the arm to feed the egg, and it unfolded itself. One wing and then the other. Blood dripped as a neck stretched and revealed the profile of some hawkish helm. A strange, infantile yawn emerged from the beak. And then it stood and flew down from its perch towards its prize.

Ren.


	6. The Claiming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is one big trigger warning. Please mind the tags, because this is where the rape occurs. The end note will summarize the chapter.

“Exquisite,” Slan murmured.

Ren opened his reddened eyes. His body ached, stricken and lashed by the unholy horde as it was. His throat choked on its burgeoning cry. He would not weep, nor would he scream. He’d not give these monsters the satisfaction. Wryly he thought to himself that the girl Rey knew nothing of the truth of monsters, if she thought him one.

His eye wearily sought the new thing that distracted the Apostles from that which he knew they’d intended.

His eyes found that thing, and grew helplessly wide.

“Hux?” Ren croaked.

From the depths of the black and red hawk helm, two fiery green eyes rimmed in gold stared up at Ren. Those eyes were as familiar to Ren as his own self, except for the yellow bands around their irises. But now there was something inhuman about them, something bestial, as if whatever was left of Hux attempted to analyze all of this, order it in a way that made sense to him, in a manner at odds with his new self. Ren trembled to behold this new Hux, so newly formed, infantile in his need to assess the world anew.

Gone was the lovely red hair that had drawn Ren’s eyes so many times. All that remained of Hux’s coloring were the golden-red lashes framing those eyes, and the creaminess of his skin. And the lips, so darkly pink like the meat of some fresh fruit, now framing the same even, white teeth, but his canines were sharper, vampiric almost.

His body was still lean, but the armor that covered him like skin was black, ribbed, shiny, shot through with crimson that banded his arms and legs, accentuated his joints and ribs and abdominal muscles. Muscles Hux had never possessed in his old body. Gone was the pale softness that made one want to eat him like he was a rare and delicious fruit.

He was stunning now, certainly; but, for the first time, Kylo Ren felt remorse at his treatment of the man who’d been his only lover.

Now the creature studied Ren and lifted his arm.

Reverently, the monsters lowered their prize into Hux’s waiting hand. And Ren knew fear.

Surely, he thought, Hux won’t hurt me.

A pink tongue ran over Hux’s perfect lips. His eyes were ravenous pits awaiting Ren’s consumption.

His clawed, strong, somehow still delicate hand clutched at Ren.

  
  


**

  
  


“We need to get in there,” Rey said.

“How?” Poe asked, dumbfounded. 

“It’s the Force,” Finn replied.

“Do we even want to?” Poe demanded.

“It’s so dark, I’m not sure how we will,” Finn replied.

Rey pulled him down.

“It’ll take more than just us,” she said. She assumed the lotus position. Finn joined her. Chewie and Poe stood watching in confusion. “You two just--keep the Falcon flying.”

She took Finn’s hand.

“I’ll tell you when to punch through that cyclone,” she said. Her voice was more confident than her heart.

“I don’t really know how to do this, Rey,” Finn said.

“Just give me your strength,” she replied firmly. “Ben is in trouble. If nothing else, we can bring him home to Leia. But I need you.”

They stared a moment at each other.

“I’ve got you three. He has no one else.”

Finn nodded.

They closed their eyes, held hands, and Rey took Finn’s essence with her to reach out through the Force.

“Come be with me,” she called out.

Finn gasped as he felt a presence--Luke, and then Leia, and the others. Whatever Rey was doing, she only knew she needed to balance the darkness to have any chance to save Leia’s son.

  
  


**

  
  


Hux was no longer Hux. Or, at least, no longer just Hux. He felt this new power surging through him. A power that once only Ren could claim. Now he was stronger than Ren could ever have hoped to have been. He flexed his taloned feet; his sharp fingers, now chitinous with armor. His new body, he saw as he studied himself, was no longer soft, no longer weak. He was so much more than Brendol or Pryde or Brooks or Snoke would have ever believed. More than Ren would have.

This fact satisfied him.

His Apostles bowed and scraped as he moved amongst them. They presented him with a gift. Ren held passive above his head, unable to move for the beasts holding him.

A massive wave of arousal coursed through his new body as they gave Ren to him.

This beautiful man he’d wanted more than anything else, even more than he’d wanted to rule the galaxy--a secret he’d held close and dear, but Ren had ruined him anyway.

He accepted Ren’s pliant, exhausted body. The wing attached like a cape to his shoulder, black and crimson, enveloped Ren’s body, and the love that human Hux had felt for Ren transmogrified into something different, selfish: Ren was now a prize long-desired, and Hux accepted him greedily. He had pleased Ren before, for a time; now Ren would live to please Hux. To satiate his desire, his craving. Hux would bless Ren with the opportunity to become his slave, his chosen pleasure. He, Ren, would be the first being to receive the blessing of Hux’s desire. Hux’s devotion transubstantiated into Ren’s worship.

Hux held Ren’s back to his chest, allowed Ren to feel his new hardness, his burning skin against Ren’s tormented flesh. Ren’s head hung low, his hair falling around it. Hux wished to see his face. The instant he wished it, an Apostle reached forth a long tentacle to gently hold Ren’s head up. Now, they would be gentle with Ren, their new master’s precious treasure.

Hux reached up to hold Ren’s face in his claw. The point of his index finger stroked Ren’s cheek, left a possessive scratch that welled with blood. Hux leaned in to lick at his new creation, the further destruction of Ren’s flesh. He lowered his hand to grope Ren’s right breast, to stroke and squeeze at it. He pinched the nipple. Ren gasped. He struggled against his demonic bonds, but he couldn’t move.

Hux wrapped an arm around Ren’s torso to tease at the other pectoral and reached his other hand between Ren’s legs.

Ren gasped as the claws poked at his delicate places. The Apostles watched, enraptured and titillated, as Hux played with his pet, his conquest, at long last.

“Hux,” Ren whimpered, “stop--”

Hux did not speak. He had not found his voice yet. But Ren would understand soon. He was blessed to be chosen for this rare privilege--Hux’s first union as a near-god.

He took Ren’s cock in his hand, brought his doted on little mortal to hardness. He relished the smooth skin, the vein of Ren’s cock against his hand. He reached farther back again, fondled his balls. Ren gasped, and this pleased Hux. He turned Ren to face him, pulled his hips tightly to his own. Ren struggled futilely against his bonds, against Hux’s strength. Ren panicked: Hux had never before been able to overpower him, but now Ren was so weak against Hux. The sigil branded into his breast ached horribly this close to Hux’s new form; it bled a little, and Hux lapped hungrily at it, before closing his lips over the nipple below it.

Ren cried out as Hux’s sharp teeth nipped it to ripeness. Then Hux repeated his work on the other nub until both stood wet and hard from Ren’s chest. Hux felt Ren’s body betray him, his cock hard against Hux’s abdomen, even as Ren pleaded with Hux to stop. Hux felt something akin to pity and also glee, and lowered his mouth to claim Ren’s. He kissed Ren to near breathlessness, nipping and licking into the heat of his mouth, forcing his tongue towards his throat so that Ren nearly choked on its elongated form. As he kissed Ren, he brought Ren’s wide, strong legs up around his hips. Hux’s armor dug into Ren’s soft inner thighs as Hux grabbed each of Ren’s buttocks hard enough to bruise and pierce the skin. Then he slowly worked a sharply tipped finger into Ren’s hole. Ren cried out, arched against Hux’s body.

Hux worked in another finger and another, making quick work of preparation. He pulled Ren against his chest and kissed him deeply once more before he drove his own cock into Ren.

Hux’s eyes closed. 

Ren screamed.

Hux’s cock filled him like never before. It was huge, thick, pulsing unnaturally. It was too much, far too much. Ren thought he’d be split in twain.

Hux wanted Ren to truly feel the joy and privilege of being claimed by a god-king. He thrust into Ren again, and Ren’s back arched so far his chest was ripe for the taking again. So Hux did.

Now he’s mine. Always, Hux thought. The galaxy, Ren, the Force. All mine.

His minions lowered Ren, and Hux plowed into his body, clutched at his hips, his chest, his throat. Ren’s neck was tight; and its veins popped out with his agony, his horror, his shame at how his body reacted against his will, because of the darkness of the Force flowing through it, thrumming through his nerves, into his extremities. He felt Hux’s raw power flood his veins, his mind, even his own presence in the Force, consuming him, drowning him. Hux’s desire overpowered his own mortification; Ren’s fear sublimated into Hux’s possessiveness. Hux’s arousal forced his own, and his cock ached, glared an angry red at the tip.

And still, Hux hammered into him.

Ren let his head fall back. Hux pulled him to his chest, so his head flopped on Hux’s shoulder. Hux sucked and bit at Ren’s neck, his shoulder, the sharp beak of his helm puncturing the skin.

Rivulets of blood trickled down Ren’s abused, wounded frame. Hux lapped at it all hungrily. Ren’s legs squeezed tighter around his hips, delighting him, as he pounded his cock against Ren’s prostate again and again.

For a moment, he pulled out; Ren thought with false relief Hux had pity on him. But the reprieve was brief. Hux turned him around. He found himself staring at the ground as Hux roughly claimed him once again.

The monsters pulled Ren flush with Hux. His body arched against Hux’s as Hux pumped his hips against Ren’s ass. Hux loved the softness, the slickness of blood from Ren’s wounds and perforated hole. Ren wept and pleaded, and so Hux turned his head, kissing him to shut him up. To show him this was an honor. That Ren should be happy that Hux still wanted him at all. To show Ren pleasure too was important.

Hux took Ren’s cock in his own hand and began moving over it. His sharp finger entered the slit, and Ren wept. He squeezed, and Ren cried out. He stroked, and Ren suddenly came with a sob.

“Stop!” he whimpered.

Hux growled and thrust harder, feeling his climax close upon him, so pleased was he with Ren’s.

And at last, his movements stuttered, and he filled Ren with himself, claiming Ren. He pulled out, and Ren screamed.

He drew Ren to him and kissed him.

“So beautiful,” whispered Slan. “Even now, this boy is his possession. Even as a member of the Godhand, our new brother desires his lovely little toy.”

Ren struggled against Hux, bit his lip.

Hux shoved him away angrily, touched his finger to his bruising lip.

Ren cowered against his bonds, in the grip of Hux’s new servants. Ren’s hair was sweaty, his face red. His eyes were glassy from sex and tears, and his lush lips were swollen.

Hux wanted more.

Obedient to his every gesture, the Apostles forced Ren to his knees.

Hux’s fresh erection stood out huge and encased in shining ebony. It was covered in semen and blood, his fluids mixed with Ren’s.

Ren flinched away as he approached.

He grabbed Ren by the jaw and forced his mouth open. Then he fed Ren his cock until it hit the back of Ren’s throat.

A strangled whimper escaped the former Supreme Leader as Hux began to fuck his mouth.

Ren tasted his own blood. He tasted Hux, and it somehow tasted of the sweetness he recalled loving once upon a better time. For a moment, the familiar taste convinced him this was a dream, that they were in bed together. Ren swallowed and played his tongue along the bottom of Hux’s cock.

It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t soft. The flesh didn’t taste or feel quite right.

Ren opened his eyes.

The demon Hux looked down into his eyes, pleased with him.

Ren wept.

And then Hux came again. He held Ren still, forcing Ren to swallow. Some dribbled from his lips. Hux yanked him into his arms to kiss him. His claw groped at Ren’s flaccid cock again, and Ren mewled weakly.

  
“Please, no--”

Hux stopped his lips with another kiss, licking at his own spend inside Ren’s mouth. His arousal was ceaseless. He wanted Ren again.

But alas, he thought, as a horrendous smashing sound echoed over their heads.

The Godhand and Apostles looked to the dome of the tenebrous sky over their heads. Ren slumped against Hux, feeling his endless erection against his thigh.

A ship appeared overhead, descending quickly.

Hux released Ren, and the Apostles holding him dumped him on the ground.

The creatures gathered close as the ship approached.

The ramp slipped down, and the girl and the traitor were there.

Hux frowned.

She tried to take his Ren. He recalled hating her.

Apostles approached the ship, lower now, but still above their heads. Rey ignited her lightsaber, held it at the ready.

“Holy shit,” Finn said.

“What have you done to him?” Rey yelled.

“Is that--Hux?”

Rey reached out a hand at the same time Hux did.

“Poe--up!” she yelled.

The Falcon rose as Hux felt power emerge from him. He missed the ship, but his blast caught some luckless Apostles. With a scream, they were compressed together until they were nothing.

Hux stared at his hand a moment, perplexed. Coldy curious, callously amazed.

He had Force powers--how novel!

But in his distraction, he missed Rey raising Ren and levitating him to the ship. As Ren’s inert form reached her arms, Hux realized he was about to lose his precious, beautiful prize and threw out a palm.

To stop.

To destroy.

At the sight of Ren’s sweat-sheened face and weeping eyes, he stopped himself.

He watched as the Light-side fools fled his feast. Then he stared at his hand and wondered why he couldn’t destroy the fool who had betrayed his former self, who had abused and deserted him. Even now.

“What a surprise!” Ubik exclaimed.

“One escaped,” Conrad mourned.

“We are not gods, after all,” Slan said casually. “We can’t anticipate everything”

“Unless,” Void intoned, “this too was predestined. It matters little. The fifth angel is born, and the time of darkness descends.”

At last, Hux, the newest of the unholy brethren, found his voice.

“Yes,” he said simply.

His voice was the same, but perhaps more so himself than it had been.

Now he was like unto a god, the galaxy would be his. And he would show his Ren all that it was meant to be, in his own hands. And Ren would bow at his feet to adore his emperor. Yes, Hux smiled, this was the will of the Force.

Meanwhile, Ren huddled in a bunk on the Falcon, hands over his ears to block out the girl, the ghosts of the Force reaching out to him.

Ren locked himself away from the Force, so that no one could find him ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Newly born demon king Hux brutally rapes Ren, thinking that he both deserves Ren, and that he is blessing Ren with his attentions. The Millennium Falcon brigade break through the cyclone with the help of ghosts of Jedi past and Leia to save Ren. Hux tries to destroy them, but he can’t bring himself to harm Ren, his last tie to the vestiges of his humanity. Ren is traumatized at the end as the good guys escape.


	7. Destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter of this self-indulgent Berserk AU.

Ren was never far from her side. It had been thus for the better part of a year. Rose had scoffed when they returned to Ajan Kloss with Ren on the Falcon, until they had told her all they’d seen, all that Ren had allowed Rey to see before he closed himself off for good.

Now he sat in the galley of the Falcon, hunched over the unused dejarik board. Rose sat beside him feeding him. Gruel stuck to his lips, but she patiently wiped them with a cloth. Finn was putting away his first aid kit yet again, after seeing to Ren’s scratches. Nearly every day, he had a fit, but only recently had he let anyone but Rey or Rose touch him. Poe still couldn’t get near him, though just the rest period before Finn had found the huge man curled up in the even huger Wookiee’s lap. Chewie had stroked his hair and wrapped Ren in his long arms, murmuring gently to him, just as he had when Ren had been little Ben.

Ren wouldn’t speak.

Finn had become battle-hardened now, bruised and even more scarred. His mind hadn’t locked itself away from everything. His body still possessed all its working parts. 

Two months into their new campaign, Rey had returned and attempted to hide herself away. She’d tracked an Apostle to Coruscant of all places and fought the thing. A rich thing, a known thing. Someone with whom Leia had sat in the Senate but not considered an ally. 

Rey had been shaking badly, refusing to show her face.

“They’re everywhere,” she told him. “They could be anyone.”

“Not quite,” Finn had replied. 

He’d turned her to face him.

“Don’t--!” she’d yelped.

At his gasp, Poe had come running from his bunk.

A long gash sliced down Rey’s face on the right. Her eye was gone, but tears fell anyway.

“It’s so stupid,” she wept. “The galaxy is full of demons, and only we can fight them, but I’m crying over a scar on my face.”

Poe kissed her forehead. “We’ll get you an eyepatch. You’ll look real badass.”

And they’d gotten used to it surprisingly quickly. More quickly than she had, but she still left, put herself in danger. And over the months, she had become so strong, far stronger than Ren; she’d dispatched countless Apostles, only to discover there were more.

And sometimes, the Apostles found them. Finn thought it was mostly unintentional. He hoped. Otherwise the Apostles were actively seeking them. Or that mark on Ren was a beacon for them. Finn didn’t want to think about that.

As if he’d cursed them, Finn saw Ren clutch his chest and moan. Rose put his bowl of food on the inert dejarik board and leaned into him.

Finn was still surprised how gentle she was with Kylo Ren.

“Does it hurt, Kylo?” she asked quietly. “Show me.”

He screamed at the name Ren and refused to answer to Ben. So Kylo it was.

Rose gently reached a finger down his shirt and touched his brand. He whimpered into her shoulder.

“Finn,” she called.

He turned to her raised finger and frowned at the bead of blood upon it.

As Rose tugged Ren into a bunk to bundle him in literal security blankets, Finn ran to the cockpit where Rey piloted with Poe. The two held hands over the console.

“Hey, good-looking,” Poe called over his shoulder. Finn kissed the top of his head. This warmth, this normalcy, held them together amidst this darkness.

“They’re coming,” he told them.

“Get Chewie. Poe, you pilot. Finn, get your saber, come with me,” Rey ordered as she stood. Poe followed, but grabbed them both to kiss them.

As Rey led Finn to the gun turrets, she asked, “Where’s Rose?"

“You know where,” he replied.

Rey nodded and turned to him. She took his hand. With her one good eye, she regarded him sternly. Her other empty socket was covered with a black eyepatch.

“Feel them?”

“Yes.”

“You’re getting stronger,” she said with a feral grin.

And suddenly, A star destroyer appeared. They could see it in the distance through the turret’s transparisteel.

“It’s the Finalizer,” Finn choked.

Rey’s eyes widened. “Wasn’t it--”

“Yes. But that's her. Rey--it’s Hux. He’s here.”

Finn began to tremble.

“He might not be. He was just crowned emperor on Coruscant.”

“No, that’s his flagship. He’s on it, or it would be a different ship.”

Suddenly, there was a loud cry, a crash, and Ren ran past them to the cockpit. Rose followed quickly behind him.

Giving up on the gun turret, Rey and Finn followed Rose and her inconsolable charge.

When they reached the cockpit, Ren was sobbing.

Before them loomed the Finalizer in sinister profile. Nothing in the galaxy seemed to move, to breath, until the Ties streamed forth like shit from the bowels of the Finalizer.

Ren scrabbled at the controls.

“Get off, Kylo,” Poe told him, trying not to shout in panic. Chewie gently shoved Ren away, but he returned with a vengeance, hauling Poe from the pilot’s seat.

“How did they find us?” Poe said.

“His brand,” Rose hissed through clenched teeth. She was clenching her jaw so hard, the complaint of her molars was nearly audible.

“How did they--” Poe repeated quietly.

Everyone turned to look at Ren. Horrible noises wrenched from his throat, inhuman sounds as he took over the Falcon. His eyes gazed in dread, maddened, reddened with tears, at the Finalizer.

And the Ties sped towards them, but no one moved, held rapt as they all watched Ren fire the lasers. He sped through the Ties’ tight formation, blowing them away as he flew the Falcon in ways that no one without the Force could. He turned quickly, exactingly, to meet the next onslaught, but it took them too close to the Finalizer.

Ren yelped and clutched his chest.

“Kylo, get us out of here!” Rey yelled.

And he did. As the Finalizer turned slowly, inexorably towards them, sending out another wave of Ties, Ren yanked the controls. The Falcon flew straight up and over the command deck of the star destroyer almost tauntingly. And then he sent them into hyperspace far, far away, as far as he could.

Then he collapsed and wept. Rose took his hand and pulled him from the pilot seat. Whatever spark of life, of determination he’d briefly possessed fled him, and he collapsed to his knees, hid his face in her shirt.

This was her life now--tending to the ship and to this giant man, because only she had not hurt him. Chewie could occasionally touch him--nostalgia, she supposed; the others Ren trusted to varying degrees. Even from Rey he now kept some distance. The more fierce she became, the more scars she acquired, the more fearful he found her. But he clung to Rose, this former enemy. And, well, if this is what life decreed for her, so be it.

She wrapped her arms around his massive, shaggy head and told him how well he’d done, that he’d saved them.

Rey turned from the cockpit.

“We need to go to Ahch-To,” she said.

“What?” Rose asked.

“It’s remote, it’s connected to the Force, and Finn and I need to train. I can’t think of anywhere safer, if any place actually is,” Rey replied.

“Well, set our course, Chewie,” Poe said.

Rey and Finn strode to the galley, and she began to train him again, like Luke had trained with Obi-Wan long ago.

  
  


**

  
  


“They’ve fled, sir,” Peavey said uneasily. He still had no clue where he stood with Hux, even though Hux had returned from the destroyed Steadfast months ago.

He’d returned different somehow.

After the Steadfast was destroyed, mysteriously, Hux had been missing for weeks. And then he’d returned with the desiccated heads of High Command and retaken the First Order. He’d decommissioned all the Final Order ships with the destructive capabilities of the Death Star, but not before he’d completely destroyed Exagol.

Peavey had been unaware the old emperor had even lived.

Now Hux was emperor, and the galaxy waited to see what he would do, now that he’d finally conquered it and crowned himself.

Hux preferred to keep his plans to himself.

But he would bring order, finally. He could rebuild everything as he’d always intended.

And he would find Ren.

As Hux gazed out the viewport, he hummed in response to Peavey.

“Do we have their coordinates?” he asked at last.

“Yes, sir,” another officer replied.

His lightspeed tracker had always been particularly clever. He smiled, pleased at his human ingenuity. Not that he needed it now. He could probably find Ren anywhere in the galaxy. But his people required the technology. And there was no need to frighten them with his newly acquired preternatural abilities. Now, he found himself proud of the brilliant, worthy human he’d proved to be. Even then, he’d had such potential. And now he was chosen, but all the old Imperials who tormented him were dead. His own personal karmic retribution.

“Follow them,” Hux said pleasantly.

Soon Ren would be his for good.


End file.
